Monthly Archives: September 2011

Fall is one of the most beautiful times of the year to visit the Arnold Arboretum. Explore the less-traveled paths of the Arboretum on a brisk walk with docent Rhoda Kubrick designed for getting fit, on Saturday, October 8, from 10 – 11:30 in the morning. Meet at the Hunnewell Building. Pause to hear about interesting plants while you catch your breath. Please dress appropriately and bring water. In case of inclement weather, contact 617.384.5209. This activity is free, but please sign up at www.arboretum.harvard.edu.Â Photo from www.naturehills.com.

One of the best things about a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box is that each week, home cooks receive a new selection of seasonal produce that inspires creativity and improvisation.Â Sometimes, though, cooks hit a road block.Â Sure, you have plenty of ideas for the tomatoes, cukes and lettuce, but what about the kohlrabi or the kale?Â As the glorious growing season winds down, the chefs of Barbara Lynch’s Stir will present a menu of current offerings from Siena Farms’ CSA along with several favorite ideas for familiar and not-so-familiar veggies.Â The class will take place at 102 Waltham Street inÂ the South End on Thursday, October 6 beginning at 7 pn, the cost is $145 (which includes an incredible dinner with wine, along with the class), and you can sign up on line at www.stirboston.com, or call 617-423-7847.

Patsy Cannon Boyce, a Past President of The Garden Club of the Back BayÂ has passed away at the age of 77 at her winter home in Arizona from congestive heart failure and complications from dementia.

For over twenty years, Patsy Boyce was one of the most active residents in Back Back, instrumental in the founding and growth of The Garden Club of the Back Bay.Â Additionally, she served on both the Building Committee and Vestry of Trinity Church in Copley Square, and supported both the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay andÂ the Boston Public Library.Â Her BPL Courtyard design served as a popular urban oasis for many years, prior to the most recent Library renovations.

Born in Bellingham, Washington in 1933 to George Frederick and Carolyn Ruth Cannon, Patsy traveled the world before moving to Boston in 1963. Graduating from Gonzaga University with a degree in Nursing, Patsy was one of the original flight attendants for Pan American Airways, flying on several prestigious routes for the airline, including the first commercial flight over the North Pole and on the airline’s â€œRoyalâ€ charters, which served leaders and monarchs around the world.

After leaving Pan Am, she was the social director on the S.S. Brazil, the same cruise ship that was later re-fitted and served as the model for â€œThe Love Boat.â€ Immediately prior to marrying her husband Jim Boyce, she was then Vice President Lyndon Johnsonâ€™s personal secretary, leaving his employ in August 1963 to be married and move to Massachusetts.

According to her long time friend, Congressman Barney Frank, Patsy was a force for good as Bostonâ€™s Back Bay became the neighborhood it is today. In a recent letter, Barney writes â€œWhen you look at the revitalization of Back Bay in the 1970s and 1980s, you have to look at people like Patsy, who as the first â€˜urban environmentalistâ€™Â did so much for this part of Boston.â€

Armed with a graduate degree in landscape design from Radcliffe College, Patsy was involved in many of the projects that helped turn the Back Bay into what it is today, including her personal favorite, maintaining the observatory at the Webster-Ames Mansion forÂ owner/developer Ted Raymond.Â Patsy is survived by her son, James Cannon Boyce, her two sisters, Carolyn McKinnon and Neila McNamara, her husband Joseph Sidlovsky,Â two beloved grandchildren, Oliver Cannon Boyce and Phoebe Jean Ann Boyce, their mother Paris Ann Boyce and numerous nieces and nephews. A memorial service will be held at Trinity Church in Copley Square at 10:00 am, on October 1, 2011. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations toÂ The Garden Club of the Back Bay.Â Contributions may be mailed to Elisabeth Lay, Treasurer, 239 Marlborough Street, Boston, MA 02116, and please note on the check that the contribution is made in memory of Patsy Cannon Boyce.

Don and Leslie Turpin will take Fruitlands Museum visitors for a walk through the woods and describe how Natives offer prayer and ask forgiveness for taking from their sacred Mother. They will perform a pipe ceremony and use a hand drum to offer traditional ancient songs. They will also bring a powwow drum to explain how they originated and how modern powwows are run. The program begins at 1 pm on Sunday, October 16. For more information and directions, visit www.fruitlands.org.

Join the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy for the Annual Meeting on Tuesday, October 4, beginning with a reception at 5:30 pm, in the first floor conference room at 185 Kneeland Street.Â Hear about the successes of the 2011 season on the Greenway.Â The reception will be catered by Greenway food vendor BBQ Smith.Â Special guest speaker Patrick Cullina (below,) a horticultural designer, photographer and lecturer who has served as Vice President of Horticulture and Park Operations for Friends of the High Line in New York City, and as Vice President of Horticulture, Operations and Science Research at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, will speak at 6 pm.Â The program is free.Â Please rsvp to Jenny at jwhelen@rosekennedygreenway.org.

Explore one of Boston’s hidden treasures: a 250 acre Victorian cemetery and arboretum listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and dedicated to nature, art and remembrance.Â Every Sunday in October, tour Forest Hills (95 Forest Hills Avenue in Boston) with an expert guide.Â On October 2, historian Elise Ciregna will present A Library of Life Stories.Â There are more than 100,000 people buried at Forest Hills.Â Hear some of their stories and view their monuments – some lavish and dramatic, and others modest or mysterious.Â On October 9, social historian Dee Morris explores some fascinating families and their Neighbors.Â Forest Hills is made up of many family lots, with entire families laid to rest next to one another.Â These lots are next to other ones, creating a neighborhood of Victorian families.Â October 16 brings A Visit With E.E. Cummings.Â Tour guide Jonathan Clark explores the work and themes of innovative poet E.E. Cummings, whose playful style and daring typography (ee cummings, anyone?) made him one of the most influential poets of the 20th century.Â The Women of Forest Hills will be the topic on October 23.Â Dee Morris leads visitors through the stories of some of the most celebrated and fascinating women of 19th and 290th century Boston.Â A hotbed of feminism and firsts in the Victorian era, Boston gave rise to such pioneers as suffragette and abolitionist Lucy Stone, historian-author Annie Haven Thwing, and others both notable and notorious.Â Visit the graves of artists, politicians, School Board activists, even spirit mediums.Â Finally, on October 30, there will be the Victorian Spiritualism Tour, just in time for All Hallows’ Eve.Â Spiritualists believed that death was a transition to a new form of existence.Â People who had “crossed over” could be contacted through seances and spirit guides.Â Visit some of the religious leaders and practitioners, as well as skeptics, of this controversial 19th century movement.Â Each program is $9, and Forest Hills has free parking and is accessible by T.Â For directions and more information, visit www.foresthillstrust.org.

The Coolidge Corner Theatre kicks off a new season of its popular Science on Screen series on Monday, October 3 with a special showing of B-movie maestro Roger Cormanâ€™s 1960 horticultural cult classic The Little Shop of Horrors paired with a pre-screening talk on carnivorous plants by Aaron Ellison, Senior Research Fellow in Ecology at Harvard Forest. The program begins at 7:00 pm.

The Little Shop of Horrors tells the tale of a hapless plant-shop clerk who breeds a new species of plant named Audrey Junior that not only talks, but also needs a special kind of food to survive: humans. Famous for having the shortest shooting schedule on record â€“ two days and a night â€“ this hilarious black comedy helped establish director Corman as an underground legend. Starring Jonathan Haze, Mel Welles, and Jackie Joseph, the film also features an iconic cameo by a young Jack Nicholson as a gleefully masochistic dental patient (possibly not a stretch theatrically.)

Unlike Audrey Junior, carnivorous plants in nature donâ€™t actually devour people â€“ or bellow â€œFeed Me!â€ But because these plants grow in habitats where soil nutrients are in short supply, they must rely on animal prey for sustenance. They catch their dinner using a variety of strategies, from snapping their leaves shut on unsuspecting insects to snagging snacks with sticky tentacles to sucking in their prey like a vacuum cleaner.

Before the film, Dr. Ellison sheds light on the curious world of carnivorous plants and on how these fabulously complex plants can further our understanding of how a complete, functioning natural ecosystem works.

At Harvard Forest, Harvard Universityâ€™s 3,500-acre outdoor classroom and ecological research laboratory in Petersham, Mass., Dr. Ellison studies the evolutionary ecology of carnivorous plants, food web dynamics and community ecology of wetlands and forests, and other phenomena. He has received the National Science Foundationâ€™s Presidential Faculty Fellow award for excellence in research and teaching.

Science on Screen is co-presented by The Museum of Science, Boston and made possible by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Tickets are $9.75 general admission, $7.75 for students, seniors, and Museum of Science members, and free for Coolidge Corner Theatre members. For more information and to purchase tickets online, visit www.coolidge.org/science. Tickets are also available at the Coolidge Corner Theatre box office, located at 290 Harvard Street in Brookline. Phone: 617/734-2500.

A ninety minute docent-led guided tour of the Larz Anderson Bonsai Collection at the Arnold Arboretum will kick off the Garden Club of the Back Bay’s â€œJapan Yearâ€ programs on Tuesday, October 18 at 10 am. We will view the historic bonsai collection in the lathe house, then see their full grown counterparts in the landscape. The Collection is one of the premier collections of bonsai in the United States and includes a Hinoki cypress over 250 years old.Â The Bonsai Pavilion where the trees are housed are part of a complex of buildings known as the Dana Greenhouses.Â The Collection is on display from mid-April to the end of October, when they are moved andÂ held in cold storage at temperatures slightly above freezing throughout the winter. Comfortable shoes are a requirement.Â Written notices with car pool information will be mailed to club members.Â The tour is limited to twenty participants, so will accept reservations on a first come, first serve basis.Â Non-club members may email info@gardenclubbackbay.org to be put on a wait list (non-member charge $15).

On Thursday, October 20th, from 6:30 – 9:30, enjoy the fourth annual Urban Barn Dance and Supper, a harvest celebration and benefit for Mass Farmers Markets, featuring a local feast prepared by Chef Bob Sargent of flora restaurant, followed by live music and contra dancing with caller Cammy Kaynor and friends.Â Chef Sargent will be using locally grown produce and meat.Â Guests will also enjoy a spectacular silent auction.Â The event will take place at the Dante Alighieri Cultural Center in Kendall Square in Cambridge.Â Tickets are $50 each, advance purchase required.Â If you’d like more information on sponsorship opportunities, contact Hannah Freedberg, Development and Outreach Director, at 781-893-8222.Â To purchase tickets, click here.

In recent years there has been an accelerating attitudinal shift: a departure away from the modernistâ€™s tabula rasa exemplified at varying scales by icons such as Philip Johnsonâ€™s Beck House in Dallas and the Lincoln Center Campus in New York. Today designers are returning to modernist sites with new motivations, attempting to balance the complex values of natural and cultural systems.

To investigate this significant evolution of professional practice, three groups of thematic presentations have been assembled that will collectively explore landscape transformations at residential, urban and metropolitan scales. The conference follows and continues dialogue initiated at the sold-out first conference convened in Chicago in 2008.

This full day conference on Friday, November 18, sponsored by The Cultural Landscape Foundation, will be held at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. You may register online at www.tclf.org. Participants will include Julie Bargmann, James Corner, Lisa Gimmy, Kathryn Gustafson, Gary Hilderbrand, Raymond Jungles, Christopher LaGuardia, Elizabeth K. Meyer, Charles Renfro, and Michael Van Valkenburgh.